ERCOT Batch Zero Has Become the Mining Industry’s New Scoreboard for the AI Power Arms Race
Bitcoin miners have found a new way to flex. In 2021, they competed on mining machine preorders and promised exahashes. In 2024 and 2025, the contest shifted toward high-performance computing contracts, with each company racing to announce the biggest AI deal. Now, according to a Miner Weekly analysis by Blocksbridge Consulting, the competition has moved further upstream, to the electricity those computing ambitions require, and a technical grid classification in Texas has become the industry’s newest scoreboard.
Over the past week, a flurry of ERCOT Batch Zero announcements showed how the power arms race is playing out, with companies turning their standing in the Texas interconnection process into a public measure of competitive strength. IREN highlighted conditional Base Load status for its 2 GW Sweetwater hub. Hut 8 flagged the designation for its Beacon Point project. Soluna announced it for the full 166 MW Kati campus. A grid classification has become something companies put in headlines, a way of showing that their power plans have substance behind them.
Base Load versus Studied Load: the number is not the story
As in the hashrate race, the largest number does not tell the whole story. The Batch Zero classifications distinguish capacity that retains its position based on earlier studies from requests still awaiting allocation. Behind similar-sounding announcements, companies, and even projects within the same company, can sit at very different stages of certainty.
Galaxy’s September 8 disclosure illustrates the distinction. Five of its projects received conditional classifications covering approximately 4.2 GW. Of that, 1.63 GW at Helios I and II was classified as Base Load. Another 2.6 GW across Caspian, Selene, and Helios III was classified as Studied Load, leaving it subject to capacity allocation. One detail deserves particular attention: Galaxy submitted its 700 MW Caspian project as Base Load, but ERCOT provisionally classified it as Studied Load. Even within one company, headline gigawatts carry very different levels of certainty.
CleanSpark disclosed conditional classifications for 585 MW as Base Load and 300 MW as Studied Load, a split the company said was expected. Ionic Digital offered a more specific disclosure, saying its transmission provider, Texas-New Mexico Power, informed it that ERCOT had provisionally classified the remaining 466 MW requested at its Ward County campus as Base Load. Energizing that tranche would bring the campus’s total demand to 700 MW, with completion targeted by the end of 2027, subject to verification, the audit process, and ERCOT’s final determination.
Cipher, by contrast, shows how much a headline number can leave unanswered. The company said initial feedback from its transmission service providers resulted in 3.2 GW of conditional Batch Zero classifications, but did not disclose how much was Base Load versus Studied Load, saying it was reviewing site-specific designations and would provide details the following week. Companies can announce a large number before investors have the information needed to compare it against competitors’ portfolios.
Why a grid classification became announcement-worthy
ERCOT’s predicament explains why a technical classification has become headline material. When Texas regulators approved Batch Zero in June, ERCOT reported more than 438 GW of large-load connection requests, with nearly 89 percent coming from data centers. By August 3, Governor Greg Abbott’s office cited more than 474 GW of requests, roughly 90 percent from data centers and more than five times ERCOT’s record peak demand. These figures measure proposed connections, not a forecast that every requested megawatt will actually materialize.
Studying projects individually becomes difficult when multiple campuses rely on the same transmission infrastructure. Batch Zero is the transitional group in ERCOT’s shift toward evaluating large loads together, assessing their combined effects, and allocating available transmission capacity. The process generally concerns facilities of at least 75 MW with sufficient prior study work and development commitments. Within that process, Base Load projects enter the study’s starting model without undergoing a new Batch Zero capacity allocation, while Studied Load projects qualify for inclusion but still face evaluation and allocation. Projects that fail to qualify must proceed through a future interconnection process. That makes Base Load a meaningful advantage, and it explains why simply being included in Batch Zero is too broad a basis for comparing developers.
The word conditional adds another layer
Abbott’s August directive required verification and an audit of data centers advancing through the interconnection process, and ERCOT subsequently issued provisional classifications. Its September 3 notice identifies possible conditions, including successful verification, corrections to technical modeling data, and regulatory exceptions where eligibility requirements were not met. Failure to satisfy an applicable condition can disqualify a project. The companies’ disclosures do not consistently identify which conditions apply to each site, meaning a project awaiting verification and one requiring an eligibility exception can both describe their status as conditional while facing very different unresolved issues.
From machine orders to megawatts
The parallel with the last cycle is instructive. In December 2021, MARA’s operating update reported an active fleet of roughly 3.5 EH/s alongside machine purchases expected to bring its fleet to 23.3 EH/s by early 2023, a milestone that did not fully materialize until mid-2024. Today’s power announcements invite the same analytical mistake: treating a milestone toward future capability as though it were production already secured. A machine order and a grid classification are different commitments with different risks.
For investors following the mining industry’s AI pivot, the useful comparison is project by project: capacity already operating, capacity preserved as Base Load, requested capacity still awaiting allocation, and the remaining steps before customers can actually use it. The 2021 announcements asked investors to look forward from machine orders to future hashrate. Today’s announcements ask them to look forward from grid access to future computing revenue. Batch Zero makes some of those paths clearer. The next test is how many of the headline megawatts become operating facilities, and when.
In 2021 it was preorder flexes, in 2025 it was AI contract PRs, now it is grid queue position. The scoreboard keeps moving upstream and I kinda respect it. Sweetwater at 2 GW is a serious chunk of Texas.
galaxy is the real read here. 4.2 GW sounds huge until you see only 1.63 GW at helios counts as base load and the rest is studied load waiting on allocation. headline number vs actual certainty gap is wild
That is exactly the point the Blocksbridge analysis makes though. Kati is only 166 MW but conditional base load for the full campus, that is a firmer position than 2.6 GW of studied load sitting in the queue.
studied load is just a polite way of saying maybe lmao
galaxy is the right read but dig into how much of helios is energized vs pending. that 1.63 gw base load figure hides its own certainty gap
funny how the flex went from preorder receipts in 2021 to HPC press releases to literally just standing in an ERCOT queue. batch zero is the new hashrap chart lol
The Blocksbridge point about moving upstream is the real story here. Electricity access is the moat now, not machines. Anyone can buy S21s, almost nobody can get gigawatts interconnected.
batch zero standing means nothing until the interconnection agreement is signed tho. seen too many gw announcements quietly die in the queue
Fair point on queue risk, but conditional base load for the full Kati campus is a step past standing. Not an executed agreement, still firmer than 2.6 GW of studied load.
Exactly. And half these Batch Zero filings are repackaged mining sites that were already energized. Calling it a scoreboard is generous, it is a PR feed.
queue position is balance sheet collateral now. lenders in the HPC deals price ERCOT standing directly, so the flex has real money behind it